


Notions

by is_this_you_manning_up_sammy



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Bodyguard AU, Bodyguard!Negan AU, F/M, Mentions of Blood, Mentions of Stalking, Mentions of alcohol, Murder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 14:35:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14404173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/is_this_you_manning_up_sammy/pseuds/is_this_you_manning_up_sammy
Summary: After a series of photos as threats of you being followed and stalked, investigators find that you could be the next victim of a wanted serial killer. You’re the only one who has seen the man and is still alive, and because of this, Negan, a professional bodyguard and early retired Federal Marshal, steps in to keep you safe until the stalking murderer is brought to justice. But what happens when Negan learns every aspect of you and your life and finds he’s become attached to the person he was supposed to protect?





	Notions

**Author's Note:**

> This is for @flames-bring-a-ton-of-ash‘s Birthday Negan Challenge. I did my best, and to be honest this was originally going to go a different direction, but I changed the plot entirely TWICE so... yeah, that happened. Anyway, this wasn’t beta read so all mistakes are my own, unless tumblr decides to screw things up for me. Also, sorry I’m a week late for this too (i feel terrible about that). @negans-network (additional notes at the bottom)

No matter how many times you wipe down this old bar-top, it always seems to stay sticky and gross. But people don’t come here to be comfortable. They come here to drink and babble their problems to you or anyone who will listen and have a drunk hook up with anyone willing to do the horizontal bed dance with. You try not to complain though, they always give good tips and never seem to notice the plugs stuck in your ears to not eventually have a migraine pound your head open with this terrible music playing the entire night. The bar-top stays sticky, and you don’t bother to tire your arm out for it anymore.

Tonight, for a Thursday, it’s a little bit slow. There’s no bodies pressed against each other or stumbling around anywhere on the dancefloor just yet. The music’s volume was brought down a few notches and you can actually hear yourself speak when a customer wants another beverage. This is how you want the atmosphere to be like all the time, if you were honest.

You pop off the cap from a cheap beer and give it to a customer when your name is called out. When you turn to your right and see your manager hold up two giant bags of trash in his hands, you sigh. You hate taking out the trash past midnight. If your poor father knew of this, he’d have a fit that you were doing a “man’s chore” and say something about chivalry dying a long time ago these days. Most of the time, you can’t help but remember his words and agree.

You try your best not to roll your eyes as you take the trash bags into your own hands.

With your hands now full, you kick the back door open and walk through into the dark path of the alleyway leading toward the dumpsters a few meters away. It stinks here, like possible dead animal, piss, vomit, and burning trash. Your gut flips at the disgusting mucky air you’re breathing since you can’t bother to hold your breath for that long unfortunately. There’s only one streetlight illuminating the whole alley, not counting the obnoxious neon signs buzzing away and attracting as much bugs as the trash does. The only good thing about this is that the bin’s lid is already open so you don’t have to touch it. You swing the bags into it and dust off your hands and wipe them on your jeans.

“Blegh, gross,” you gag, a shiver from pure disgust running down your back. When the chore is all said and done, you turn on your heel back toward the back entrance of the bar. On your trek, you step into a questionable puddle of...something, and immediately, you pause to wonder if this job is worth ditching right now to head straight home. You close your eyes for a second and sigh, finally looking down to your feet. Fortunately, thank goodness, it was not a puddle of piss but a puddle of water mixed with car oil. Your shoes are old anyway, so that’s the least of your worries.

The sound of cracking glass up ahead pulls your attention away from your wet soles.

There’s nobody there for a second until a man eerily steps around the corner. He’s smart enough to not let anything illuminate his face, not even the weak streetlight above and the red neon sign behind him. Those lights hit his back and makes him look like a black shadow, a demon from your worst nightmares that dwell in dark corners of a fiery hell. You still can’t make out any features of his face except for what the red light that halos around him. He’s just there, facing you and daring you to make a sudden movement. He leans casually against the corner wall, tapping his foot quickly, almost as if he’s matching it to the quick beat of your heart in your chest. Your gut feeling is telling you to hurry up and run back inside, but your feet are frozen in place where you stand.

And just as quick as he appeared, his red shadowed silhouette slips away back to where he came from.

You don’t take your eyes away from the corner, just in case the creep decides to change his mind and return. Your brain finally successfully commands your legs to move and walk back inside into the bar, and you release a shaky breath you didn’t know you were holding.

“What the heck took you so long? Is taking out the trash such a hard job for you to handle?” Your manager bursts out angrily, startling you out of your paranoid reverie. “Go back to the bar, there’s people waiting!”

You bite your tongue, nothing but the urge to tell him to fuck off, shove a bottle of cheap beer up his ass and finally quit this forsaken job.

Instead, you do as told and go back behind the bar-top, quickly grabbing bottles and popping off their caps to serve the sudden large groups of people that have joined together in the last hours of the night. The music’s volume starts blasting and booming from the speakers now, and the dance floor becomes a sweaty heap of drunks grinding against each other. The rest of your shift distracts from what happened earlier, the image of the man’s shadow far away in the back of your mind now.

 

It was half past two o’clock in the morning when you had finally left the closed bar and arrived home to your apartment building. The apartment lobby is quiet. There’s only one of the landlords behind their desk window, lazily reading a week old newspaper with their TV showing infomercials to serve as background noise, and they barely give you so much as a glance your way.

You sigh and trudge onward with sore and swollen feet to the wall with the apartment mailboxes. Your keys rattle as you pop yours open, grab the small stack of that’s inside and shut it closed and locked again. Luck isn’t on your side when you notice the elevator isn’t working tonight, leaving you to walk all the way up to your fourth floor. Filing through your mail on the way up, there’s nothing but a magazine subscription, some bills, junk mail, and only one blank envelope.

This catches your attention and curiosity immediately.

There’s no markings on it, not a single tear or fold or wrinkles on its paper corners, not even a smudge of any kind. It’s a stark white, crisp and clean, light between your fingers. You don’t waste your time or bother to cut it open with a letter opener when you walk into the door of your apartment and step to your living room. You tear and peel away the sticky classical fold of it from the back, pictures spilling and sliding out of it onto your floor.

Kneeling, you pick one up, all breath catching in your throat at what you see.

The first picture is of you through the curtain of your bedroom window. You’re getting ready to prepare for your nightly routine and putting up your hair into a ponytail. You’re in your pajamas, only a tank top and a pair of shorts, the ones you always wear. The image is a bit pixelated and blurry, zoomed in as far as possible. The only possible way to get this picture is from the same floor from the apartments next to this very building.

You scramble on the floor to look at the next images, fingers sticking to the glossy, but poorly developed photos.

The next one is you buying a coffee at your favorite shop. The view lets you know it was taken from across the street, also zoomed in as far as possible. It looks foggy and the corner of the picture is showing a bright flare of light.

There’s three more, all of them taken of you from a far distance just going about your day with friends or running daily errands.

But the last one, something tells you it’s more recent, and you don’t realize you’re crying tears from pure fear until one drop escapes and falls onto the glossy paper.

It’s you working at the bar, with the clothes that your wearing today, right at this moment, and you nearly scream when you realize that whoever has been following and stalking you was right there in plain sight tonight and you had no fucking idea.

You don’t waste another minute to bolt all the locks on your doors and windows, quickly shutting all the curtains and falling to your knees to unlock your safe box hidden in your closet. You pull out an empty .38, and curse yourself for never buying those bullets when you should have.

You sit there on the floor, clutching the empty pistol in your sweaty palms, retracing and thinking as far as you could to remember to the same time and days as those photos. Nobody significant seems to stick out in your memory, aside from the usual pervs at work.

And it makes you realize.

For all you know it could have been that man that was standing at the corner tonight, just watching, his shadowed face a bottomless pit of black. That image is so clear and focused in your head

You don’t sleep that night, your exhaustion the least of your worries right now, and stay up until the sun rises into the sky.

 

\---

 

It’s nine o’clock on this Friday morning, and Negan is already feeling his brain start to bug him with a migraine. He knows the coffee in his old and now empty mug doesn’t help at all, but he drinks it black and bitter anyway if he wants to stay awake. He’s only worked two hours into his shift so far, and he has a feeling it won’t pick up to a more interesting pace anytime soon. He could be wrong, nobody ever knows what type of crook can be brought through those doors or what new story people will tell.

Maybe he should bug the newly recruited deputy or flirt with Lt. Rhee to pass the time already.

Negan leans back in his old swivel chair as far as it goes, it groans and squeaks in protest of his heavy weight, but he ignores it and sighs, throwing a pen onto his desk in annoyance. It’s still too early to be writing any type of fucking report right now, and he’s not going to bother filling them out at the moment.

“Fuck me,” he groans, pinching the bridge of his nose and pushing his glasses to the top of his head.

“Rough night?” A voice asks from behind, the smell of fresh brewed coffee filling the air around him.

Negan laughs sarcastically and turns around in his chair this time. He meets the eyes of his old, long time coworker Simon. Even, and if anything, sometimes Negan just might call him an old friend too. There’s a hot pot of coffee in Simon’s hands and Negan reaches back to the empty mug on his desk, holding it up for the other tall man to fill it up almost to the brim with the steaming hot liquid.

“You could call it a rough fucking night alright,” Negan replies, throwing a smirk and a wink over the rim as he takes a slow sip.

“Which ex was it this time out of all of them?” Simon jokes.

“I don’t fucking kiss and tell,” Negan says.

“Oh, please. When don’t you?” Another voice butts in and the two men turn to see the Lieutenant shake her head. “You never shut up about it, Negan.” She rolls her eyes but turns away to attend to a deputy’s inquiry, and doesn’t notice Negan check out her ass in that pressed uniform.

“It was Sherry,” Negan reveals despite his own previous words.

“She’s a married woman for God’s sake. I thought you cut that string a long time ago,” Simon voices his disapproval, his thick mustache wiggling as he frowns.

“You really can’t fucking tell me what to do, Simon. If she goddamn fucking wants it, and I’m---”

The sound of doors bursting and slamming open from the main entrance catch the attention of everyone in the office, and all heads snap up to see a woman frantically panting with a terrorized look in her eyes.

“I need help, someone, anyone, but I need help. I think someone is going to kill me. Someone has been following me and I--I don’t know what to--”

The receptionist is doing their best to calm the woman down but they have no luck until Lt. Rhee steps in quickly to defuse the sudden situation. The woman clutches onto the Lieutenant’s arms desperately, repeating that someone was after her to kill her, tears falling freely and voice pitched so high. She pulls out a torn envelope from her jacket pocket, saying that a creep took pictures and sent them to her as a threat. Negan has seen this before. Rhee manages to quiet her down slightly, escorting the woman by the shoulders away from the entrance and toward a more private interrogation room down a hallway. Rhee meets eyes with Negan, signaling him to follow quickly.

He places down his still full mug and grabs his prepared blank documents stuck on a clipboard and a black pen as he stands in a hurry, now eager to fill those papers out for the new case that just presented itself.

It turns out he didn’t have to wait that long for the shift to pick up after all.

Negan joins the Lieutenant and the woman in the spare room. This may be a place where they do most of their interrogations, but the room is clear of any distractions. An ideal setting. There’s a table at the center with four chairs around it, one window, only one entry, two bright lights above and one two-way mirror. Rhee is standing beside her as she eases the woman into a chair and the woman is still tearing up when she throws the envelope with the pictures onto the table.

“Listen, I’m Lt. Rhee and this is Negan,” Rhee gestures. “Start from the beginning. What’s your name and tell us what happened.”

Negan gets ready to write everything he can when he settles himself, and they both listen quietly. Their faces are neutral as they give you their full attention.

And so you tell them as best as you could. Your name, how nothing had seemed out of the ordinary about yesterday during the day and until you got to work, trying to be specific about times, places and familiar people you saw. Then how you had come home late and found the envelope in your mailbox. You even tell them about yourself sitting in your closet with your empty .38, never sleeping a wink.

They never interrupt you as you speak the details, and Negan nearly has a whole page filled out with his neat handwriting, keeping it organized as possible to review later. He looks at the two-way mirror, meeting the eyes of his own reflection knowing there’s at least one Detective back there. He’s thankful they didn’t join the room, it would have served nothing but interrupting you and would have made you feel like they were crowding. Usually that leads to more anxiety and panic, and that’s what they try their best to prevent further.

“Why didn’t you just come to us as soon as you saw the pictures?” A man’s voice suddenly asks from a speaker above.

“W-What?” you squeak in surprise, looking up to the ceiling at the source.

“I said, ‘Why didn’t you just come to us as soon as you saw the pictures?’” A man bursts through the door. He’s not wearing a uniform but he’s in plain clothes with a lab coat. He holds a bowl of cereal in one hand and a spoon in the other, eating casually as if he wasn’t supposed to be working right now. He was just walking by when he heard about somebody screaming and it caught his natural curiosity. He had listened in to your whole story.

“I-I didn’t want to come here when it was still dark. I stayed up all night, but he could have-- he might’ve been out there just watching me,” you answer shakily, wondering if it was a mistake to not have immediately reported the threatening images, wondering who this man was to begin with.

“What the fuck, Eugene?” Negan scolds at the man’s insensitive and inconsiderate question. He had startled you and interrupted when you were explaining one of the settings of the pictures, the one of where you were at work last night. This man irritates him and everyone in the building to no end. He was wrong about how may have been listening from behind that window.

Rhee ignores the both of them, placing reassuring hands on your shoulders again as she settles herself into the chair beside you.

“It’s okay. You did nothing wrong. Waiting and coming to us when it’s day out was a smart move,” she says, and it only makes you feel a little better about that. “You’re safe with us now, and you don’t have to worry about whoever has been following you from getting in here.”

“You sure it’s not a lover playing a good ol’ game of sadistic roleplay? Or maybe a disgruntled boyfriend or ex perhaps? Although I’ve never seen this type before, I’m sure writing a kinky line like “you look good enough to eat” in the classical romantic color of red in ink as a short letter in the back of each of one of these pictures, I’ve gotta say, that’s some next level game they might be playing,” the man with the lab coats says quickly, without skipping so much as a beat. He stuffs another spoonful of cereal in his mouth and drops the spoon in the bowl, reaching for one of the pictures and flipping it to examine the back.

“Negan, get him out of here!” Rhee hisses the order.

Negan quickly stands and grabs Eugene by the back of his lab coat quickly, having had enough of his incessant babbling. Eugene’s face immediately turns pale in realization of his mistake and his shoulders hunch forward as if to make himself smaller and submit the more authoritative man. Eugene drops the photo back onto the table, and just as Negan is about to throw him out of the room, the Lieutenant stops them at the door.

“Wait!” She exclaims. “What did you say about a letter?”

“I’m just saying the flirtatious suggestion at the back of each poorly developed photo matches the modus operandi of another case our very own Detectives are trying to solve right now as we speak,” Eugene attempts to explain.

Negan lets go of him and the man with the mullet seems relieved.

The lieutenant and Negan are too busy looking at Eugene in pure disbelief and annoyance that they don’t notice your fingers sliding the photo he had dropped towards yourself.

Last night, when you first saw the images when they had spilled onto the floor, you didn’t look at the backs of them. You flip the photo to the back between your fingers and you read what it says.

There in red ink is the message spelled out messily, some of the red blotted that left dark spots and splatters.

 

 

**_YOU LOOK GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT ****_**

 

 

“Oh my god,” You stutter in a gasp and cry, your body shaking and blood turning icy in your veins as you read the ominous threat. It couldn’t have gotten any more worse. You don’t know what it means, and you fidget in your chair and hug yourself protectively.

What the fuck does it mean?!

Negan quickly shuffles the photos away and out of your sight and puts them back into the torn envelope, shoving them onto Eugene’s chest.

“Take these away to those Detectives. We want them examined, right fucking now,” he growls, finally pulling Eugene by the collar of his coat again. Eugene’s mouth is bubbling with apologies as he’s pushed out the door. He nearly spills his cereal when the door was shut in his face.

Rhee is rubbing your back to soothe and calm you down again and Negan has never felt such a more familiar rage bubble up inside him when he sees you start to cry again.

No matter how many years he’s been on the job and caught so many deranged assholes during his career as a Fed, he can’t help but to always feel responsible to defend and protect them as much as he can when cases like these involve the terror of poor women and children as victims. Come after him, and he accepts the challenge proudly and in full swing. But come after an innocent? He’ll hunt them down himself and damn all the consequences.

“I k-know it’s not a stupid lover,” you sob as you try to speak, Eugene’s first theory running around in your head. “I don’t have a fucking boyfriend and I know for sure it’s not an ex! I haven’t seen any of them in years! I’ve dealt with fucking creeps all my life! Why does this have to happen?”

“Shhh, just breathe,” Rhee tries to de escalate your further growing panic. “Just try to calm down and think. Clear your head for a second. Has there been anyone that sticks out that may have gotten too close recently? Made you uncomfortable or failed at gettin’ your attention?”

“Last night,” you answer immediately. “My boss told me to take out the trash, and in the alley there was a man just standing there at corner. He didn’t say or do nothing, he was just there, watching me. It was dark, so I barely got a good look at him.”

“What kind of boss has a woman take out the trash in the middle of the fucking night in the first place?” Negan mutters under his breath, but you hear his short comment.

“My boss is a dick. I’ve told him so many times not to send me back there, that something like that creep could happen,” you tell, only calming down a little bit as the Lieutenant keeps rubbing your back and you look into her green eyes. “And I don’t-- What did that guy mean when he said this was the same as another case?”  
Rhee looks at Negan silently when there’s a knock on the door and in comes two women. They look at the commanding officer, their faces still and neutral, but they share a silent conversation with Rhee as they all meet eyes. The Lieutenant sighs and she stands, telling you that she’ll be right back and you’re left in the room with Negan.

Negan’s slides his glasses back onto his nose and stuffs his hands in his pockets as he continues to stand. He sees that you’re still visibly shaking, frozen in your chair.

“When was the last time you ate? Want a cup of coffee? Some water?” He asks gently. Having food in your belly could help ease you down, and he’s sure what the answer could be already. He only wants to make people in cases like these feel comfortable and most importantly, extremely safe. It’s the least he could do if the eyes of the Detectives meant what he thinks it meant, and he already dreads having to tell you the terrible news soon.

“I’m not hungry, but some water would be nice, please,” you answer quietly.

It nearly makes his heart ache that you still use your manners despite the situation.

Negan nods, silently pulling out his phone and sending a short text to Simon to bring a water and something from the vending machine to the interrogation room.

Negan is a tall man, and even though you’re usually weary of being alone in new places with big strangers, let alone anyone with some type of authority to begin with, you find he doesn’t scare you at all. His voice was deep and soft as he talked with you for a short moment, reassuring you that you were safe here just as Rhee had. He apologizes on Eugene’s behalf, explaining that the man has a tendency to never shut his mouth and mansplain things annoyingly all the time. He keeps you distracted until Rhee comes back inside, a bottled water, bag of chips and granola bar in her hands given to her from Simon just out the door. One of the Detectives is beside her, thick files tucked under her arm.

Rhee sets the food down, and Negan opens the bottle for you. You can’t do it yourself with nervous hands. The Lieutenant settles herself down next to you again and nods at the Detective. Negan sighs again, this time filled with much regret and a sinking feeling in his gut instead of boredom.

“I’m Detective Espinosa,” the woman speaks. “My partner and I are here to help you with your case, but I’m going to tell you and show you some things that you’re going to need to know. You may not like what I have to say.”

“What’s going on?”

Detective Espinosa doesn’t waste a beat to pull a file from under her arm, it’s thinner than all the other ones compared. She slips out photos of young women of a wide diversity and there’s ten images in total in two rows of five.

“Does anyone look familiar to you?” Espinosa asks.

Looking and examining each one closely, you find you come up short and shake your head no.

“Why are you making me look at these women? Who are they?” You inquire yourself, hands hovering over the happy, young and innocent faces.

“All of these women were stalked and followed for months. They were sent photos of themselves just as you have with the same threatening message on the back. Unfortunately, they didn’t get the chance to report what was happening before they went missing,” the detective explains slowly, with no other way to avoid the hard truth of her brutal investigations.

“The same thing that happened to me… happened to them?”

They all nod quietly.

“And you never found them?”

“Some.. eventually,” Espinosa nods.

“Alive?” your voice trembles, your throat clenching.

“No.”

Espinosa isn’t going to show you the pictures of the brutalized bodies of these women, the ones she’s been fortunate to find at least. She knows it’s already growing to be too much, overwhelming and engulfing your heart with terror, and she decides to spare you those details today. The moment Eugene came into her office and dropped the photos onto her desk, she knew immediately what they were. She had sighed tiredly and sadly, thinking maybe another victim had been found dead and it was too late to rescue someone once again. She had thought of the dread she’d have to deal with for informing the unfortunate family, but she was surprised when Eugene had told her the very woman in those pictures was alive and well in this interrogation room.

Espinosa, Rhee, and Negan give you a moment to process this revelation.

You clamp a hand over your mouth and make no sound. There’s no more tears that you can shed, and you realize things really can be so much worse.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m sure I’m forgetting something. Anyway, as I’ve said, all mistakes are my own as this was not beta-read and keep in mind English isn’t even my first language so there’s bound to be a few mix ups in grammar or expressions here and there. Please tell me what you think or if you spot a mistake despite it all lol. Additionally, I plan to post this on my Ao3 too, since this could so “gracefully” bloom into a series. There’s already a next part cooking up. 
> 
> If you want to be tagged for this on Tumblr, send a message to @is-this-you-manning-up-sammy
> 
> I haven’t posted a fic in such a long time and I really wanna thank Ash for inspiring me.


End file.
